Another law said that the colonists should buy the goods they needed from no other country than England, and that these goods should be brought over in English vessels. So in buying as well as in selling they were at the mercy of the English merchants and the English ship owners, who could set their own prices.
But even more unjust seemed the law forbidding the manufacture in America of anything which was manufactured in England. For instance, iron from American mines had to be sent to England to be made into useful articles, and then brought back over the sea in English vessels and sold to the colonists by English merchants at their own price.
Do you wonder that the colonists felt that England was taking an unfair advantage? You need not be told that these laws were strongly opposed. In fact, the colonists, thinking them unjust, did not hesitate to break them. Some, in spite of the laws, shipped their products to other countries and smuggled the goods they received in exchange; and some dared make articles of iron, wool, or other raw material, both for their own use and to sell to others.
“We will not be used as tools for England to make out of us all the profit she possibly can,” they declared. “We are not slaves but free-born Englishmen, and we refuse to obey laws which shackle us and rob us of our rights.”
So when to these harsh trade laws the Stamp Act was added, great indignation was aroused. Among those most earnest in opposing the act was Patrick Henry.
Let us take a look at the early life of this powerful man. He was born in 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. His father was an able lawyer, and his mother belonged to a fine old Welsh family.
But Patrick, as a boy, took little interest in anything that seemed to his older friends worth while. He did not like to study nor to work on his father’s farm. His delight was to wander through the woods, gun in hand, hunting for game, or to sit on the bank of some stream fishing by the hour. When not enjoying himself out-of-doors he might be heard playing his violin.
Of course the neighbors said, “A boy so idle and shiftless will never amount to anything,” and his parents did not know what to do with him. They put him, when fifteen years old, as clerk into a little country store. Here he remained for a year, and then opened a store of his own. But he was still too lazy to attend to business, and soon failed.
Patrick Henry.